Cassie opens the pantry. A tin of tomato soup and half a packet of Saos, tinned peas and corn. Not much else in there at all. ‘I don’t see them,’ she says.
There’s no answer and when she looks back to the kitchen table, her mother is gone.
‘I can’t see any biscuits, Poppy,’ she says again. ‘There’s nothing in there. When did you lot last go shopping?’
‘We’ve all been busy,’ Poppy says, straightening the handles on the milk jug and the teapot so they are parallel, ‘a bit busy.’
Ida’s bed stands stripped naked. Cassie sits on the bare springs and tries to remember when she saw Aunty Ida last. She can’t remember saying goodbye before she left for school. She must have. She couldn’t have forgotten.
‘Ida said specially to give you these things,’ Poppy says from behind her. He has a shoebox in his hands. A box that once held a pair of Alex’s work boots. Was he wearing them when …
She takes the box from his hands. Poppy sits on the edge of the metal frame of the bed. ‘I know it’s hard, but Ida had a good innings. And she knew … so she got to say her goodbyes, tidy up her life. We should all hope for that.’ Not like Alex. The unsaid words stick to the air between them.
‘No one told me … that she was so … I’d have come home to see her.’
Poppy pats her shoulder. ‘Don’t have regrets,’ he says, and reaches past her to the box. He pulls out a white handkerchief, trimmed with white lace, starched stiff and yellowing. ‘Ida made this, for her wedding day. She wanted you to carry it when you get married.’
Cassie takes the hankie from him and turns it in her hands, corner to corner. She places it back in the box.
A ratty blue book nestles on top of the box. ‘Ida’s recipes,’ she says, opening it to a page in the middle. She smooths her hand over the long cursive writing in fading blue ink splattered with biscuit dough. She smiles. ‘Ida always said the book would open on the most used recipe first.’
Poppy laughs.
Under the recipe is another book, Gardens in Australia: Their Design and Care. Cassie opens the front cover. Inscribed on the inside flap, ‘From your brother Gustav, Christmas 1944’.
‘You should keep this,’ she says, flicking through the pages.
‘No,’ Poppy says, ‘I have no use for it.’
Cassie moves aside a jumble of seed packets, probably too old to plant, and sees a brooch with purple and white stones and silver leaves.
‘I don’t think it’s valuable,’ Poppy says as they turn it in the light.
At the bottom of the box, as though it was the first thing Ida put into it, is Ida’s Bible.
‘Don’t know why she gave you that,’ Poppy says, standing with a grunt of effort. ‘I’d better go give your mum a hand feeding those chickens. There’s a storm brewing somewhere, I’d say.’
A blistering chill spreads over her shoulders. ‘A storm,’ she whispers.
‘Pardon?’ Poppy says, rubbing his thighs and grimacing.
‘I should come help,’ she says, putting the box on the springy bed.
‘No, no, you stay and spend some time thinking about your great aunty. She thought the world of you, you know.’
‘I know,’ Cassie says, picking up the box again and fingering the seed packets. Alyssums, paper daisies, lettuce.
With Poppy gone, she wanders back to the kitchen. The calendar she marked the warning for her family has disappeared. In its place on the blank wall, just a hole where the nail used to be.
Ida’s mattress is on the veranda, propped up where the sun and air will freshen it. Cassie pulls it onto the wooden floor boards and ignores the odd stains as she sits cross-legged on it. She shuffles the contents of the box. She flicks through the gardening book. It’s very old fashioned. She spits on the end of her finger and shines the purple stone in the centre of the brooch. She opens the handkerchief and tries to flatten out the ironed creases.
Sweat trickles down the crevice of her spine, a long drip that slows and spreads across the base of her back. Perhaps Athena will come to the funeral. And her father. Bastard. She pushes the box from the mattress and lies across it. Ida is dead. The thing that will happen has happened. There is nothing worse to come. She closes her eyes. It is all okay now, today, the day on Alex’s picture, the dream is all about what has already happened. Ida was old. She was sick. There was nothing Cassie could have done about it. She could have stopped the fall, a burst of regret, but she pushes it back. It is too late. She saved Poppy. Poppy is still here.
Everyone has to die, she thinks, and in the heat like a shroud of flames she falls to sleep.
She dreams of Athena’s father. He is naked, his body covered in tiny red hairs, across his chest, rising up his navel, and even his pubes are red, and then they spark and light one by one like flaming dominoes. Cassie can’t take her eyes off his penis, she knows she shouldn’t look, but the flickering flames cover it like a crown and she can’t believe he can make his hairs light up this way and he is smiling and then she realises there are other women there. They are all looking and whispering and she sees they are all trying to get closer to him. No, she tries to say to them. Be careful, he is dangerous. He’ll burn you. But they don’t listen.
A deep rumble wakes her, shakes the core of the earth and shakes her core. She opens her eyes, her heart thumping. Around her the garden is an ominous place, shaded neither light nor dark, like twilight but smudged without twilight’s sharp promise. Cassie pulls herself to her feet and gathers Ida’s things back into the box. Holding the box to her chest she looks to the western horizon. A thunderhead reaches across the hills, a giant bruised fist. A whip of lightning rips a seam through the sky. Thunder rumbles through the heavy air like an avalanche of boulders.
Cassie yells through the screen door. ‘Poppy! Mum!’ She pauses, listens. ‘Poppy!’
The still house doesn’t answer, its purple shadows abandoned. The wind spurts and splutters, buffets the azaleas and spins leaves and garden debris into a frenzy. Cassie starts in the kitchen and races from room to room, closing sticky windows, slamming and latching them against the galloping wind.
On the veranda again, she teeters on the edge of the top stair, the wind curling her hair into her eyes. Poppy and her mum should be back from the chicken sheds by now. A cold chill chatters under her skin and goose bumps form under her flesh. She rubs her arms. A shimmering flash of white light washes away the garden’s colour. Thunder pounds the hills. Cassie races down the stairs, pulling her hair out of her face, runs down the sandy path. Ice picks of rain sting her face. She stops under the jacaranda tree, then remembers you shouldn’t stand under trees in a thunder storm. A flash of lightning whites out the sky and the chook sheds blaze for a second, brighter than sunlight. The old gum tree, ghost white, spins like a show ride. The rain grows heavy and slaps the ground.
Cassie focuses on the shed doors. They will fly open at any moment and Poppy and her mother will appear and run across the clearing. Or perhaps they have decided to stay in the sheds until the storm passes. Lightning rips across the sky, puddles lake in dips in the ground, their surfaces constant rings as the rain fills them higher. Taking a deep breath, Cassie sprints across the clearing. The rain instantly soaks her, her clothes a sponge, her skin slick with rivers of water. She pulls the chook shed door; it flings out of her hand and slams shut again. She pulls at it, fighting the wind’s furious intent on keeping her out. She opens it a crack and squeezes inside the shed. The acrid manure smell assails her; the chickens pace nervously in their tiny cells.
‘Poppy!’ she calls.
She feels her way down the aisle, her feet sticking to the concrete, the rain pounding a war dance on the corrugated iron roof.
‘Mum!’
She spins and looks around her; chicken feathers float in the air with dust and darkness.
She makes for the tiny storage room. P
oppy leans against the door, rolling a feather between his fingers. Her mother sits on an old feed drum.
‘Cassie.’ Her mother stands. ‘You’re soaked. You should have stayed in the house.’
‘I had to find you,’ Cassie pants, falling into her mother’s arms.
Her mother laughs. ‘You’re making me all wet.’
Cassie shivers. ‘We’ve all got to go back to the house.’ She pulls on her mother’s arm. ‘Now.’
Her mother doesn’t move. ‘We’re safe here. The storm will settle in a bit.’
A clap of thunder stabs the earth. They all jump with fright; the chickens squawk and fret.
‘That was close,’ Poppy says.
Cassie pulls her mother’s arm.
‘I am not going out there,’ her mother says, her arm stiff, immobile. ‘You should have stayed inside. Did you close up the house?’
‘We’re not safe here.’ Cassie looks at Poppy, pleading with her eyes. It feels wrong, she wants to say. Hot tears heat her eyes. ‘Please.’
‘Sit down.’ Her mother pushes her towards the drum. ‘I’ll find something to keep you warm.’ She starts sorting through a pile of hessian sacks. ‘They used to make underwear out of potato sacks.’ Her voice cracks as she brings the scratchy sack over and wraps it around Cassie’s shoulders. ‘It’ll be all right.’ She pulls the sack tight and rubs Cassie’s legs, trying to flatten the goose bumps.
A torrent of wind slams the shed wall. The roof above them creaks and a piece of iron lifts and slams back into place.. Cassie and her mother look to the roof and then at Poppy, who stares at the roof, still twirling the feather between his fingers. The dark cobwebbed roof stares back, silent.
‘Mmm,’ Poppy says, ‘windy.’
Tears stream down Cassie’s cold cheeks. She leans on the wall behind her. ‘Please, Poppy.’
Another gust pounds the wall and they look above them. A flash of sky appears and disappears as the roof lifts.
‘I think,’ Poppy says, dropping the feather to the ground, ‘we should take Cassie back to the house and get her into a hot shower.’
The wind thumps the walls.
‘Gus?’ her mother says, looking at the roof.
‘Get a sack each and run like the clappers.’
They grab a sack and head for the door. A thousand marauding fists hammer the iron walls. It takes all three of them pushing on the door to open it.
Poppy holds it open with his body. ‘Go!’ he yells.
Lightning flashes, revealing the clearing as a shallow lake of dark water. Sacks wrapped over their heads, they hurl themselves into the storm. Her mother and Cassie take each of Poppy’s arms to pull him along. They could both run faster, Poppy’s slow gait a clumsy shuffle holding them in the wind and rain. Cassie wishes she could pick him up, carry him. The rain fills her eyes and blinds her, the way ahead bleary and wet. Lightning strikes pierce the earth around them, the ground shudders beneath their feet.
The jacaranda tree looms ahead. They stop under it, Poppy panting and leaning on his knees. ‘Come on, we can’t stop here,’ he says, and they shuffle towards the house.
Cassie hears a loud sound of screeching metal, and an exploding crash on the slamming wind behind them. She turns to see what it is, but Poppy pushes her forward.
‘Move!’ he yells and propels her towards the stairs and up onto the veranda. Cassie flings open the door and they fall into the house, dripping puddles onto the floor.
Her mother throws down her sack and shakes her hair. She wipes the wet from her face and her eyes gleam. ‘That was insane!’ She laughs.
Euphoria rises up in Cassie like fireworks. They are all safe. ‘Towels,’ she cries and runs for the bathroom, grabbing as many as she can carry.
Cassie and her mother wrap their shoulders in towels and giggle like girls. Poppy sits on the dining room chair, heaving, a wet lake forming under his feet. Cassie takes a towel to him and pulls it tight around his shoulders.
‘You have to get out of those wet clothes,’ she says.
Her mother disappears into her bedroom and comes back, her hair wrapped in a towel, a dressing gown tight around her. She lifts Poppy from the chair. ‘Come on Gus, I’ll take you to your room. Cassie, you go have a warm shower.’
The hot water stings her cold skin. She turns in half circles under the streaming water, waiting for the warmth to seep deeper into her muscles. A loud pop sounds and the lights go out.
‘Power cut,’ she calls to no one. She turns off the water, steps out of the shower and reaches for a towel.
Dry and warm she finds Poppy and her mother in the kitchen, the half-light clouding the room. The wind has eased, the rain plays a steady soothing rhythm.
‘We should get candles,’ she says. ‘In case the power is still out when night comes.’
‘I made you a hot chocolate,’ her mother says, pushing a cup her way. ‘It might have gone a bit cold. I can’t heat it up now.’
Cassie sits down. Poppy has changed into dry clothes. He bends towards her, kisses her cheek, and rubs his hand up and down her back.
‘Go and have a shower, Poppy. You’ll feel better.’
‘I feel fine,’ Poppy replies, but his mouth and face sag and his voice is heavy. Cassie squeezes his hand.
‘Remember when we were little,’ she says, ‘and the power went out? We used to light candles and play snakes and ladders.’
‘When you were little?’ her mother grins. ‘Didn’t we do that just last summer? You weren’t so little then.’
‘I think it was longer ago than that.’ Cassie sticks out her tongue at her mother.
‘Cheeky beggar,’ her mother says. She leaves the room and comes back with the snakes and ladders box. ‘Set it up then,’ she says, throwing the game onto the table.
Cassie reaches for the box and opens it. ‘I want to be red,’ she says, opening the board. What about you, Poppy? Blue?’ Cassie tips the coloured chips onto the table. ‘Where’s the dice? The dice is missing. Oh, here it is.’
‘I’ll be green.’ Her mother picks up the green token and lays it on the start square.
‘Poppy?’ Cassie nudges him. ‘Blue?’
Poppy’s eyes don’t leave the empty space in the middle of the table. ‘Alex always loved a good storm,’ he says absently.
Cassie stares at the snakes weaving down the board, rolls the dice around in her hand.
Her mother stands up from the table and slides from the room.
Poppy sits unmoving.
Cassie looks at the space where the calendar should be and wonders who took it away. The screeching, crashing metal sound she heard on their mad dash echoes in her mind. Is it real, happening then and there, or is it something yet to happen? Imagination? Did her father stay at the pub or try to beat the storm home? The dissipating euphoria is hammered back into the dull fear she seems to live with every day.
Within half an hour the rain stops almost as quickly as it started. The sunlight finds gaps in the clouds and reasserts its will. The garden glows a vibrant unreal green. Birds begin to chatter and gossip. Some storm, they say. Some storm.
The power is still out and the house, missing the white noise, is grave like.
Cassie pins Ida’s brooch to her t-shirt. It pulls heavily on the fabric, weighing it down. She listens for the crunch of her father’s vehicle down the drive. She has been listening since the moment in the kitchen when she realised the day wasn’t over. It is too much. There is no way something would happen to him so soon after Ida … after Alex. The stallion thunders in her memory.
When the car finally appears on the horizon, she takes her time. She waits until she hears the car door, until she hears the distant murmur of his voice and Poppy’s. She waits until she sees her mother look out the window, searching the path. She waits until it does not seem she is concerned.
>
Then she wanders down the path towards where the men’s voices float on the luminous air.
The chook sheds are gone. Her father and Poppy stand, hands on hips, mirrors of each other’s concern. The twisted metal a razor, bloodied with feathered bodies. Cassie walks up to the men, her mouth open, waiting for someone to notice her, or not notice her. It doesn’t matter. This is bigger than she is.
Her father’s face, drained white, turns towards her. ‘Cassie,’ he says and turns back to the mangled wreck that was their livelihood.
‘What happened?’ Cassie says, but it is a stupid question and no one answers it.
Poppy trawls his hand off his hip and grabs Cassie’s shoulder and pulls her close. ‘We were in there,’ he says, his voice thick and wet, groggy.
Her father nods. ‘You told Rose yet?’
‘I knew something was up,’ Poppy continues. ‘The roof started lifting. It didn’t look good. There was nothing I could do.’
‘Rose doesn’t know?’ her father asks again.
‘She’s been in the house,’ Poppy says.
Her father turns and walks towards the house.
‘How’s our insurance?’ Poppy calls after him, but her father doesn’t answer. ‘Insurance will cover it,’ he continues under his breath.
A galah flies into the dead towering gum and climbs limb to limb to the highest perch. It shrieks, high pitched and shocked.
And so the day reveals itself.
~ 33 ~
Leaving
People attend Ida’s funeral and wake with weariness, as though two funerals in the one family in such a short period is more than their politeness can bear. A resignation, a relief that her suffering is finished, is the overall theme. Bad luck about the sheds. On top of it all. Shipped back to school for her exams, Cassie feels thrown into the lifeboat of a sinking ship. She’s the only one in the boat but it is a boat made for more than one.
She dreams of the black stallion. No longer interested in her, he prances around the wrecked chicken carcasses. She sees his penis, slick and putrid, and her dreams turn to Paulo, the yearning thick. She dreams Paulo stands behind her, brushes his hands over her shoulders, and she shudders as though tickled with a hundred feathers. The lightness in her heart lifts her, but whenever she turns, or it is time to kiss, the dream thwarts her. He must leave, she must leave, something gets in their way.
Cassandra Page 23